


Forget Me Not

by DixieSummers



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-23 17:48:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14337813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DixieSummers/pseuds/DixieSummers
Summary: This is honestly just my way of working through the heart breaking season 8 finale. I've always wanted to see how Rick would deal with having someone close to him support Negan's ideals, so here it is! I wrote up another kid for Rick to fill the void in my heart that is Carl Grimes.





	1. Mercy

I had spent most of my adult life in his shadow. 

Literally. 

When Negan fell, I was a few days shy of my 19th birthday. My father’s victory against Alexandria’s Big Bad Wolf was what everyone talked about. I couldn’t go anywhere in the Hilltop without hearing about how much of a hero he was. 

Rick Grimes- saving the day. 

Again. 

They didn’t know better, they didn’t know how his single mindedness, his blood-thirst; killed my whole family. They didn’t know about the wars he would make up in his mind, first it was the Governor, and now Negan? They all think it ends with him, but I know he needs to fight. He says he wants peace, but my father finds wars that are not his to fight, a cause that never existed, to find lives to sway and sacrifice.

He needs to fight, to kill, to silence the demons that tell him the truth- the truth that he killed my mother and my younger brother. His people fight for him because they believe Negan killed the innocent. Because Negan’s new world is not the utopia my father promised. 

They think my father deserves his happy ending. They forget about the innocent people he murdered, the men and women who surrendered to his authority, the men who got murdered in cold blood, all in the same breath. 

They forget my mother, who died at my brother’s hands, bringing my baby sister into this world while my father fought the Governor. She died because he would rather fight the never ending war than be with his wife- the woman he vowed to love, when she brought his second daughter into the world. 

They forget my brother, who died trying to be the good man our father was, saving lives when my father was too busy ending them. My little brother, who deserved the world, but died in a sewer under a place we were supposed to call home. My brother, who in his last moments, fought the good war- the war for peace, the war he would have won if he was protected. My brother believed in peace, but the mistake that cost him his life was that he believed my father could find us peace. 

And I held hope. I held the hope that my father would change, when Carl died, when he left us his letters for peace. He believed in my father’s false cause right until the end. He wrote to me, he hoped that I would lead, he hoped that I would believe in our father once again, that I would tell Judith about him, and mom, and raise her to believe that the world would be for the living again. But when Carl died, and they still fought, I lost my hope. 

And I trusted Negan. 

Negan was the only way that I could save the last of my family- my baby sister. He offered us a better life, a new world order where we never have to choose to live or die, a world where my sister could grow up in a place that wasn’t a war zone. She would never have a mother, my father made sure of that, but she might have had a father, a man who would finally put her life over the glory of victory. 

I was there when he fell, I was there when this war ended. I stitched his throat back together, and sat by his bed in the Hilltop. I whispered my dreams to him, I whispered my hopes that we would leave the Hilltop, that he would keep Judith safe. That we would keep Judith safe. That wars to be fought and won would be the thing of the distant past. 

I just never knew he was listening.


	2. Stay Close

I was about to leave when I heard my name rasped through a dry throat.

“Anna.” 

I turned, but refused to meet his eyes. 

“Did you hear all that?” 

“Yes.” 

“I’ll go get you some water.” 

“Stay. Anna, please.” 

Moving wordlessly, I sat back down into the chair I had set up by his bed. 

Despite the pain he was in, the split throat, the gun powder burned hand, he reached his good right hand out to grip mine. 

“I’m sorry.” 

Through his pain, his suffering, he managed to sympathise with me, the coward daughter of Rick Grimes, the girl couldn’t stand up for what she thought was right. 

“No. I am. I’m sorry for what my father did to you, I’m sorry that I didn’t stop it. I’m sorry I didn’t stand by you.” 

“You had to be there for Judith. I never knew. I spent all that time with your brother, I never knew you believed in my new world order.” 

“You didn’t know, you’re the last person who should be sorry about this.” 

“I’m sorry about Carl, I’m sorry about your home. God- I’m not just sorry for you, I’m sorry I failed my people.” 

“You didn’t fail them, my father took that away from you.” 

“Holy fucking shit- didn’t know Rick the prick had a kid with common sense!” 

He smiled his signature shit-eating grin, lighthearted in the face of adversity. 

“There you are. I missed you, thought you were going soft on me.” 

“You could never make me soft babygirl!” He laughed, winking at me. 

He spoke again when our laughter had died down. 

“You could have it you know.” His tone somber, his light eyes burning into mine. 

“What?” 

“Your safety.” 

“Is it strange that I couldn’t picture that new world without you in it?” 

“I can’t fucking lead anymore Anna. All those people? They trusted me, just like you did. And I let them down.” 

“No Negan, you fought for them. That’s the difference between you and my father. You fought to save your people, and my father fought to win. He killed them, you were just doing your job.” 

He leans back into his pillow, satisfied. “Damn. I didn’t see it that way. Fuck’s sake girl, I could have done with one of you! Where were you all my life.” 

“Well old man, for most of it I wasn’t even born yet.” 

“And she bites too! You know babygirl, I’m starting to feel like you might be the only good thing to come out of this shitshow.”


End file.
